Thursday, September 24, 2015

"You called it Rob---he's going to the SFMTA"

Yes, I called it, but it wasn't a toughcall, given Muni's history of hiring anti-car bike people to run the city's transit agency. After all, the city's Transit First law was rewritten long ago to include bicycles. Advancing "better transportation options"? Gee, I wonder which "option" he means? Not surprising to learn that Bialick is "excited" to be boarding the MTA's gravy train, which is turning into a jobs program for unemployed bike people:

Since I announced my departure from Streetsblog, folks have asked about my next move. Well, I’m not going far: I’ve accepted a position on the SF Municipal Transportation Agency’s public relations team.

In this new chapter, I’m excited about working directly on projects that advance better transportation options in the city. To start out, I’ll be working in a media relations position on Muni-related project and service announcements.

I’ll be in good company with a lot of folks I’ve gotten to know through my years of reporting on the agency’s policies and projects, some of whom have also transitioned from advocacy roles. Former Streetsblog reporter Michael Rhodes is now a Muni Forward planner, and Andy Thornley, whom I first met when I interned at the SF Bicycle Coalition in 2009, manages on-street parking programs. To my mind, when the city hires good advocates, that’s a sign of success for the movement.

I’ll be here at Streetsblog through the end of the month, and after that, you’ll still see me around. I’m changing jobs, but I’ll still be working to make San Francisco and the Bay Area more livable and sustainable.

9 Comments:

Rob, have you noticed how they are all writing about you and this issue over at Streetsblog. Are you still not allowed to post comments over there? If they are so interested and concerned with your opinions, why do they refuse to allow you to be part of the dialogue?

I'm the only consistent critic in the media the city's bike nuts have ever had. They can't believe that we don't find them as cool and adorable as they apparently think they are. Recall that one of the commenters, John Murphy ("Murphstahoe"), was once dubbed the Bike Commuter of the Year by the Bicycle Coalition.

The Gunderson parody would be flattering if it wasn't so dumb and poorly done. In their minds that UC study that found that the city failed to count more than 1,300 serious cycling accidents between 2000 and 2009 is now some kind of a joke. That's how much they really care about safety. They're dumb and dishonest at Streetblog, which means they'll surely find a suitable successor to Aaron Bialick.

He's making fun of your ridiculous conclusion of the UC Study. No one else has come close to your level of 'concern' about bikers getting hurt, especially when you compare it to other transit related injuries & deaths, like cars. But you never mention anything about that. Who's really the joke here...

Okay, phony, tell us specifically what's "ridiculous" about my interpretation of that UC study. It doesn't really require a lot of interpretation, since all you have to do is read it. Evidently I'm more concerned about the safety of cyclists than you and your goofball bike comrades. Why hasn't Streetsblog or pseudo-intellectual Jason Henderson done an analysis of the study like I have? I also analyze here other city documents, like the Collisions Reports---about auto and other traffic accidents---the city used to do every year and the annual Transportation Fact Sheet.

I also posted Commander Ali's analysis of every fatal traffic accident in the city for 2014. Streetsblog doesn't like Ali's approach, since he found that pedestrians were responsible for half of their own fatalities and cyclists were responsible for all three of theirs. Streetsblog called this "blaming the victim"!

You guys are both intellectually lame and gutless, since of course you make this kind of comment anonymously.

There's no mystery about who/what is behind allowing the Bicycle Coalition to take over our transit system and to redesign our streets on behalf of this small, obnoxious minority. I've been writing about it for years. It starts in City Hall with the mayor and the board of supervisors. They appoint the MTA board. They've been aided every step in the process by city progressives at the now mercifully defunct Bay Guardian and now more feebly at the SF Weekly.

And the dailies deserve a mention, since they have always been on board for the trendy, pro-bike, anti-car agenda. The middle-aged people running the Chronicle and the Examiner are desperate to show the trendies that they are okay with anti-carism and the dumb smart growth movement, the ideological underpinnings of the rapid gentrification of San Francisco.

That's why neither the Chronicle nor the Examiner have published anything about the UC study: it simply destroys the fantasy that riding a bike in San Francisco is a safe and sane way for a significant number of people to get around. They can't allow that fantasy to be undermined, since it's too important for City Hall and its media apologists.

It starts in City Hall with the mayor and the board of supervisors. They appoint the MTA board.

So you're saying this is the fault of the people that the entire City of San Francisco elected to run the City of San Francisco.

I think you're really on to something. It's a massive "voter conspiracy". These "voters" - a strange secretive cabal, with no accountability back to we the people, have wrested control from the people of this city. We must find them and stop them before it's too late.

No conspiracy, just an epidemic of GroupThink by our "progressive" leadership in the city. Both district elections of supervisors and Ranked Choice Voting have skewed the politics of the city by electing people to the Board of Supervisors that would never be elected in citywide elections. RCV reinforces that distortion by electing people by an even smaller minority of voters.

The Bicycle Plan is such a big change in the design of city streets and managing our traffic it should have been widely debated and put on the ballot for voters to decide. Instead, it's simply been a done deal from the start, with our litigation merely being, in Leah Shahum's words, "a bump in the road" on the way to implementation.

When there's been opposition in the neighborhoods (see this, this, this, and this), it's simply been ignored and steamrolled into submission by City Hall.

That GroupThink also leads to other varieties of stupidity, like the kerfuffle about the anti-jihad ads on Muni buses. Progressives/liberals in SF can't/won't even defend themselves against people who want to kill them, because of their goofball version of multiculturalism!